Broker out to prove blondes have more funds

“My best friend and I started it during COVID because everyone was at home and we had all this time,” Dugan told Mortgage Professional America in a recent interview. “We had this great idea years ago that it’d be awesome to have a podcast. Of course, we’re both in the mortgage business, so we were, like, we’ll make it about mortgages. But nobody wants to sit and just talk about mortgages all the time, so we decided we’d make it more lifestyle, but also mixed in with mortgage and financial information. So that’s what we did, but we made it fun.”

The goal was to make mortgage brokers in general more accessible, she suggested. “We wanted to make it where they [listeners] could see a side of mortgage brokers that was a little bit more fun,” she said. “I think most people when they deal with mortgage brokers think about stuffy bankers sitting in an office. For the most part, mortgage brokers are not that. We can still have fun with our clients in a way that banks might not necessarily encourage their originators to do.”

It’s fun to listen to, both co-hosts displaying healthy doses of self-deprecation sprinkled with solid insights on mortgages and related subjects. Yet for all its fun, the podcast is a serious component of her profession in staying in front of her clients and prospective homebuyers, she suggested. Along with the podcast, Dugan is active on social media. Particularly amid current challenges exacerbated by higher rates and inflation, Dugan pointed to her social media activities as something other brokers should emulate to keep communication going with customers.

“Social media is a big part of my business,” she said. “The majority of my business is repeat referrals from past customers, database, some realtors, and social media. I’ll get on social media, and I’ll stay in front of people. They may be thinking of purchasing and obviously many people aren’t thinking of refinancing right now, but when they do I want them to think of me. I want to do it without sending an email that’s going to go into their junk folder. I’m going to communicate with them on their page. It’s a family event, or somebody’s birthday or somebody in their family wins an award – I’m going to comment on that. Their son’s playing football and made a touchdown – I’m going to comment on that. The see my ace and see my posts consistently enough, they’ll remember me.”